 |
 |
Newsletter : 2fax0129.txt
Directory | Previous file | Next file
>PD
>Israel Faxx
>JN Jan. 29, 2002, Vol. 10, No. 19
Israeli Islamic Leader Rejects Temple History
By IsraelNationalNews.com
The Israeli Islamic Movement leader, Shiekh Raed Salah, told reporters that the use of the Temple Mount is "exclusively a Muslim Arab Palestinian right." Furthermore, "There never was any First or Second Temple in the vicinity of the al-Aqsa Mosque."
However, Salah rejected the accusation that he was denying Jewish rights. "I am not denying Jewish rights there. I am saying that they have no rights there."
Palestinian Motorist Killed After Running Down Israelis
By Ross Dunn (VOA-Jerusalem)
A Palestinian driver was shot dead Monday in Tel Aviv after injuring two Israeli soldiers and a policeman. The incident came just one day after a Palestinian woman carried out a bombing in downtown Jerusalem.
The Palestinian came from the West Bank town of Qalqilya, ramming through an Israeli military checkpoint at high speed, knocking down a soldier. The driver then headed to the Israeli town of Petah Tikva, outside Tel Aviv, where he crashed into a car, injuring two other Israelis.
He then commandeered another car, driving it to Tel Aviv, where he knocked down a woman soldier and a policeman. Shortly afterward, the driver was shot dead by Israeli police.
Eyewitnesses initially said the driver had opened fire with a pistol before being shot dead, but Israeli police later said no weapons or ammunition were found on the vehicle.
The incident sparked a massive police manhunt, amid already heightened tensions following a bombing in Jerusalem Sunday carried out by a Palestinian woman, possibly on a suicide mission.
The Palestinian Authority condemned that attack, but Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat was directly responsible for the bloodshed for failing to rein in Palestinian militants.
White House: Arafat Must Do More to End Violence
By VOA News
The Bush administration said it was not satisfied with actions by Palestinian Authority leader Yasir Arafat to crack down on terrorism and end violence. Spokesmen at the White House and State Department said Arafat has yet to take the kind of strong, sustained, concrete steps that he needs to take.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said President Bush made clear his disappointment with Arafat during a telephone call Monday to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
The U.S. official spoke after the Palestinian Authority said it dismissed and arrested a Palestinian official suspected of involvement in the smuggled shipload of weapons intercepted by Israel earlier this month. He said the arrest was a step in the right direction, but that more needed to be done.
Israel Protests School Talk by Terrorist's Daughter in Tokyo
By DPA
The Israeli embassy in Tokyo has complained to a Japanese public school that invited May Shigenobu, daughter of the Japanese Red Army founder Fusako Shigenobu, to give a speech last month to pupils, a news report said.
The Japanese Red Army was responsible for the terror attack at the Lod airport in 1972 that killed 20 people.
According to the Jiji Press, May Shigenobu, 28, was invited to an elementary school in Kanagawa prefecture near Tokyo on Dec. 15, to tell students about Arab culture and to introduce Arab food. Israeli embassy officials in Tokyo said Shigenobu gave students a one-sided political message when she spoke of the Palestinian Authority.
May Shibenobu's mother, Fusako Shigenobu, 55, left Japan in 1971 for Europe and came in contact with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and set up a Lebanon-based group the same year - later to be called the Japanese Red Army.
Working closely with the PFLP, the Japanese group achieved notoriety first in the 1972 attack on passengers at Tel Aviv's Lod airport - which is now known as Ben-Gurion Airport - with machine guns and hand grenades. The attack left more than 20 people dead and another 76 injured.
Fusako Shigenobu was arrested in Osaka in November 2000, after 30 years on the run from the Japanese authorities. She is facing trial on various charges, including masterminding the September 1974 Japanese Red Army seizure of the French embassy in The Hague. Three Red Army members took 11 people hostage and forced the French government to release one of their comrades.
Jewish Leaders Thank Lithuania for Returning Torahs
By VOA News
Representatives of several Jewish groups have praised Lithuania's decision to turn over 309 religious manuscripts known as Torahs to Hechal Schlomo, a Jerusalem Center for Jewish Heritage.
Representatives of the American Jewish Committee along with the vice president of the B'nai B'rith organization met with Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas on Monday to thank him. An additional 58 scrolls will remain in Lithuania at the National Library.
The release of the Torahs, containing the first five books of the Old Testament, comes as the world marks the 58th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. The Nazis exterminated more than a million people, mostly Jews there.
The scrolls were placed in Lithuania's archives after the Nazis destroyed many of Lithuania's synagogues and killed 90 percent of the country's 220,000 Jews during World War II. After the country formally regained independence from Soviet rule in 1991, international Jewish groups began pressing the government to hand the Torahs over to Jewish religious organizations.
